Virginian handling Harvard 'firsts' fine

April 16, 2008 1:33 am

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust is the first woman, and Southerner, to hold that post.

LEAVE IT TO Virginia's first Republican governor since Reconstruction to note the nuance of the moment.

At a luncheon of Harvard alumni last week at Richmond's stately Jefferson Hotel, A. Linwood Holton rose to pay tribute to his alma mater for the choice of its 28th and first female president.

But it was another "first" that was on the 84-year-old former governor's mind. Virginia-bred Drew Gilpin Faust, a noted Civil War scholar, is also the first Southerner to serve as Harvard's president.

Judging by her flawless performance last week, Faust is handling the "firsts" just fine.

She was selected for the job after controversial President Lawrence Summers lost the confidence of the Harvard faculty. And you can understand why Faust got the nod.

She has a way of mixing the funny with the weighty. And she's a good listener, a description that didn't fit her predecessor.

Asked if her gender helps shape her presidency, Faust noted with a smile that some have said that her strengths match those often associated with female leaders. But then she suggested that her brother in the audience might want to comment on whether she really is "kinder and gentler."

The challenges facing Harvard's new president, from a vast new financial aid program to developing a new campus across the Charles River from the main campus in Cambridge, Mass., are dizzying. But there's a calmness to Faust as she travels the world for Harvard, including a recent stop in Shanghai.

Quizzed about the university's environmental initiatives, Faust related how "green" students had recently made some polite demands.

For Valentine's Day, they sent her a big heart-shaped box of chocolates, with a note saying they wanted "a date"--for when Harvard will reach the goal of becoming carbon neutral.

That gentle approach is a far cry from my days at Harvard, as I mentioned to the 60-year-old Faust. In the late 1960s, we would have been more likely to occupy her office than send her a box of candy.

But for all her plans for the future, Faust's academic efforts have focused on the monumental war that ripped America apart almost a century and a half ago. The Civil War has been her claim to fame as a longtime professor at the University of Pennsylvania, as head of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and now as president of Harvard.

Indeed, it's the brutality of that war that Faust captures in her latest book, "This Republic of Suffering," which chronicles how the carnage changed America's way of looking at death.

The massive death toll also challenged the organizational prowess of a nation suddenly confronted with tens of thousands of casualties on the battlefields and in the camps.

Faust's academic research often has led her to Richmond, which is not all that far from the northern Shenandoah Valley where she grew up.

Among those welcoming her back to Virginia's capital city at last week's luncheon was former Gov. Holton's daughter and the current first lady of Virginia, Anne Holton.

Ms. Holton is a Harvard Law grad, as are her father and her husband, Gov. Tim Kaine, who did not attend the luncheon.

That's quite a cluster of accomplishment in one family--and a remarkable level of success in Virginia politics.

Indeed, former Gov. Holton, who took office in 1970, shared with Faust a story about just how big a political challenge he faced. Early in his political career in Southwest Virginia, Holton was told that any politician with a law degree not from a university in the Old Dominion but from "some school like Harvard" probably wouldn't amount to much.

Ed Jones: 540/374-5401
Email: edjones@freelancestar.com